Speak to Me
by badgerjaw
Summary: Heavy hearts are hard to mend alone. IchiRuki
1. Chapter 1

Why are you so heavy lately? You barely eat since Hueco Mundo, but you feel heavier. In spite of your bones jutting beneath your skin you feel as if you've swallowed tonnes upon tonnes of raw steal. As much as I hate to admit it, I'm worried about you.

Since we came back to get stronger, you've changed. All you do is train and slay the odd Hollow that happens to turn up. I can't ever find you, even if there are traces of ice lingering in the places you've been. You've stopped going to school. Karin and Yuzu are concerned because you don't sleep in their room anymore. Pops is talking even more to the poster of Mom, wondering what to do to make you smile again (even if most of your smiles from before are fake). Orihime is really worried about you too; she's feeling kinda guilty about the whole thing I guess. I'm in the midst of this trail you're leaving here and I don't like it. It's too sad and quiet and hungry and heavy.

Why are you so damn heavy?

The only time I ever see you face to face now is when a Hollow is lurking around Karakura. You hop in through the window and find me waiting for you to jump on my back. This Ichigo-Taxi thing is pretty ingrained in us even though you do have your powers back. Before I actually didn't mind you hitching a ride on my back; it was actually quite nice in a mentor/student way.

I dread it now.

I know you aren't gaining weight. If anything, you're losing it like mad. But having you ride on my back is like carrying the world on my shoulders. I'm not Atlas, you know. You're heavy in a way I can't even describe, but it's suffocating me and forcing me into a panic attack.

What's wrong? You don't touch food anymore, you don't even sleep, you don't talk to anyone, you don't even draw pictures for me anymore. What the hell, Rukia? All you do is sit in bright places and think with that horribly blank face of yours. What do you think about? That ass-hole brother of yours? Dumb-ass Renji? Clueless Orihime? ...Me? What's so pressing that you sit under the pale orange street-lights at night and think?

You need to sleep.

You need to eat.

You need to talk with someone.

You need to do _something_ dammit.

The world dies when you're depressed, Rukia. Can't you see? Look at everyone you've touched in Karakura and tell me if you see one smiling face among them. There's something about you that is contagious. Whatever you're going through effects other people, the people who you've charmed even through your fake school-girl guise. You're the kind of person that sets the mood.

_What's wrong with her?_ Everyone asks me that. Why? I'm not your keeper. I tell them to ask you. Has anyone approached you? I don't think they can stand the aura of heaviness around you.

Wake up, Rukia. Whatever this is that is bothering you needs to get said or else you're just going to fade away again. Nobody wants that, Rukia. We all had boring lives before you came and made them interesting. We don't want you to inch away from us to be swallowed up by the orange street-lights.

I don't want you leave in any way.

I need you here with me so you can continue to teach me.

I think you're the only thing that keeps _him_ away.

Don't go.

Don't let the heavy heart consume you.

I'll be there, when you're ready to open your mouth (and heart) and speak.

Rukia, speak to me.


	2. Chapter 2

It's hard, Ichigo.

It's hard to look at you sometimes because there are certain things that scare me and tease the welling tides of my past.

I wonder why you couldn't have just laid in the street that night and stayed there like I told you to do. Why did you have to save me? Why did this determination have to breed that thing inside of you? Why does my past double itself to harm yet another person that means so much to me? Tell me the answers, Ichigo. I'm so lost right now, too many scars have been reopened with a point of clarity that makes it sting so much worse than before.

No one except you can attempt to understand, and even then your long reach cannot touch me.

You and I have built a frail bridge of string and those little metal things you call paper clips. I stand in the middle of the swaying structure because I understand your guilt concerning the death of your mother, the centre of your family's universe. I can understand completely. But you, you still stand on one of the dusty cliffs the bridge is bound to, and you try to reach for me, I can feel it, you try to shout my name, I can see it on your lips.

I think some part of you knows that if you try and cross to me the bridge will collapse. You have not lived long enough to gain the wretched experience that I have; our combined experiences and their similarities are the only things that bind the string and paper clips together and it's only enough to hold me up. Me and my heavy paperweight heart. Unless you want us both to fall, don't try to cross.

You may have not been able to protect your mother, but were you actually the one to kill her? Did you watch the Hollow pervert her with bizarre tentacles slithering out from her orifices and from beneath her skin? Did her eyes become nothing more than empty sockets? Did she try and eat you? Did she make you a coward? Did you have to kill her with your own hands and drag her back to her family?

The rain may haunt us both, Ichigo, but it is I who has the blood staining my hands.

Out of my own cowardice, I slew my mentor, Lieutenant Shiba Kaien, who was possessed by a Hollow, almost like you are now.

He may not have been a father, a brother, or a lover to me, but he meant more to me than I even care to admit. He transcended all of that. He is the only reason I stand before you tonight, under the orange glow of the street-lamp. His heart and memory gave me the strength to slay him once more, even if it was not truly him but an Espada. He helped me fight the restraints that stopped you from killing Grand Fisher that night at the cemetery.

I think when you have killed a beloved person twice you will have the experience to fortify this bridge and come closer to me.

But I don't want you to go through the same thing, Ichigo. I want you to stay on that sturdy rock and allow me to balance alone. If anything should break this web of loose strings, it should be my heavy heart, not your inexperienced feet.

If we have a falling out, I don't want to blame you.

But knowing you and your stupid double standards, you will attempt to walk this thin line. It will break, Ichigo, and what will we do then? Will you attempt to catch me before I drown in the waters of my own despair? You said yourself that the heaviness I exude suffocates you. You will drown as well.

I don't want to be near you anymore. I cannot bear to be near you knowing that something similar to the thing that tainted Kaien-dono lurks within you... because of your determination to save me. I don't think I have the heart to kill another man that means so much to me. My heart is in tatters to begin with and there's no way it can survive another blow like that.

If you have any sense and respect, you will keep off this bridge and its frayed fibres.

If you have any respect or pride for yourself, you will leave the edge of your cliff and train to control your Hollow.

If you have any pride and trust in your friends, you will allow them to help you in any way they can.

If you hold any ounce of trust and mercy in your heart, you will let me stand here alone to fix my own problems.

Let me heal my own heart, so I can be strong enough to protect you from yourself.

Can this be the one request that you listen to? Can you please do this one thing for me? Heed this, Ichigo. Please.

Act as if it is my final wish.


End file.
